The occupiers exert pressure on representatives of all denominations, except the Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, in the temporarily occupied territories. In particular, the enemy closes churches of various Protestant denominations.
Thus, the occupiers seized the building of the Church of Evangelical Christians in Melitopol. Although the occupiers initially gave the pastor permission documents, later they simply seized the premises and took the keys.
There are almost no functioning Protestant churches left in the city, because most of them were expropriated by the occupiers for their own needs. Note that the situation is similar in other captured settlements.
We will remind you that earlier the Russians began to engage in the “integration” of churches in the temporarily occupied territories, within which only churches under the control of the Kremlin will remain in the region. A corresponding program “assistance to religious organizations in the integration into the Russian socio-cultural space” began to operate at the TOT. It is carried out by the NGO “Russian Association for the Protection of Religious Freedom”, which is financed by grants from the President of the Russian Federation.
In fact, the organization is engaged in auditing the property of other denominations in order to further destroy all Protestant movements, the local Orthodox Church of Ukraine and Muslim centers that are not under the control of the spiritual administration of the Muslims of the Russian Federation. Moscow has already implemented a similar policy in Crimea.
